Resignation is how I survived the horrors of Elon’s secret office. For years I’ve feared for my life, after Elon found out what I knew. Now that I have Stage Four, however, my fears are that it (what you deserve to know) will die with me.
Elon isn’t the monster that some people try to portray him as. I worked closely with him for years and although he is practical and strict, he isn’t without morality or kindness. At least that is who I thought he was, who anyone would think he is, that has worked closely with him for years.
Discovering Elon’s secret office happened when I lost my C17 FOB. I had just had lunch with Elon and I had thought he was going to a meeting with Jerry Sunders at two. I went back to Lab One and found my entry key missing.
Panic set in immediately, but only the “Oh no I am in big trouble because I’ve just lost my purse.” kind of panic. I tried to call Elon after I realized I had used mine during lunch to show him something in our table’s Holo. Maybe I had left it in the cafeteria.
When it wasn’t there I had decided Elon must have it. I couldn’t get ahold of him so I resolved to intercept him and get my chip. I went to my office and used my laptop to locate it. Seemed as though Elon was in his office instead of one of the meeting rooms. I went up there and waited with his secretary.
“Is he in a meeting?” I asked, eventually.
“No.” I was told. I started feeling impatient. Elon paged his secretary in and when they came back out they left the office door ajar and hurried off on some errand. I stood up and slinked over and peeked in.
Elon was nowhere in sight, but my chip was on his desk by his placard. I found I was tiptoeing and looking around and tried to walk normal. I got what I came for and turned to leave when I heard a muffled scraping sound from within the internal wall of the office (as two corners of it are just glass and the fourth is the entrance). I wondered whose office was next to Elon’s and tried to recall the shape of the hallway from the elevator. As I was leaving I found that there wasn’t one. Kimberly Satz’s office is kittycorner and the rest of the floor is composed of two large meeting rooms and the hall with the offices of several more executives.
I was puzzled and went back to Elon’s office. I heard more strange noises and went and held my ear against the wall. There was something going on behind that wall of Elon’s office. I could hear strange and disturbing sounds, like voices or growling.
Then I noticed an imperfection in the slitted wood bars that decorated the carpeted wall. I pushed it and it slid aside - a hidden panel was revealed. Staring around the edge of the opening into the darkness, my eyes slowly adjusted.
I saw candles and strange glowing symbols on the walls. It was the shape of a room that seemed to be coated in thick reddish-brown molasses, dripping and oozing. Elon knelt facing away from me and began chanting some kind of prayer to the thing before him. I couldn’t quite see what it was.
There was a breathing and growling sound as though some massive animal were crouched in the depths of the sticky chamber. I felt a sensation of it looking at me from the darkness where I could not see it. I could feel my thoughts being stopped and examined by it, I could hear it ransacking my mind, feel its presence as it listened to everything in my head. Primal fear of the impossible beast welled up in me and I felt a new kind of panic.
“Oh no, I’ve lost my purse and I am in big trouble.” Is not panic. Staring into an organic chamber of congealed gore and knowing a giant monster is staring back and reading my thoughts is panic. The sensation of fear starts in the eyes and goes straight into the brain. My feet tingled like I was falling or on a roller coaster and my stomach felt the same - falling or sinking sensation. My mouth went dry and sweat burst out of me as my heart rate accelerated. I wanted to scream, to block it out - to ward it off - but as I tried I could not.
“Sh-Ke-Ith-La-Ith.” Spoke Elon, saying the name of the creature as his ungloved hands and voice were raised in adulation. “Mother Serpent - hear the prayers of the devoted.”
His words were of the language of the thing in the darkness. Somehow I knew what they meant. The mental connection made their meaning plain to me. I was disturbed by the images and emotions of the language of creatures inhuman. The thing was a god, old and cruel, named Xhithulhith.
The sacrament came only when Elon’s scaly hands reached under his chin and removed his face and scalp like a Halloween mask. I wasn’t breathing as my shocked terror bid me watch without realization of immediate danger. It was as though I was dreaming, yet still afraid. A nightmare for my sober mind.
The reptilian horror came from the curtain of shadows and slime: an echidna of draconian proportions. Its multitude of ophidian orbs shone with hideous luminescence and its urticated chelicerae opened as a tendril extended from within. The lizardman face of Elon was visible from behind as he tilted his head back and opened his mouth to receive the communion.
My mind flashed images of fractals and flowers and Persian rugs, rejecting the unbearable image of the daemon.
Revolted by the squishing sound of the insertion - I nearly vomited my lunch.
Reeling, dizzy from nausea, released from the cerebral grasp of the creature’s telepathic reach, I staggered. My eyes wildly looked from the office to the hidden chamber and back and rested on Elon’s human denture’s on the ground beside him.
I don’t remember my exodus from Tesla. I just came to in my car, crying and shaking and telling myself it was just a dream. I had calmed down over several hours and it was early evening. I recalled I had sat in my car, very upset, for hours. Then I drove home.
There was no way I was ever going back there again. I was terrified that I would be hunted down and silence if I ever said why. I turned in my resignation letter, explaining that I was recently diagnosed.
I spent years in isolation as my condition worsened and my fears for my life became an excuse I no longer possessed. I’ve got very little time left, but I don’t want to leave this world without warning it.
Alone I was, with my fear, and it was a kind of death. In speaking about what happened to me I have overcome that fear, outlived that death. What life I have left I will enjoy living.